"William Tenn - Eastward Ho!" - читать интересную книгу автора (Tenn William)

Eastward Ho!
William Tenn

The New Jersey Turnpike had been hard on the horses. South of New Brunswick the potholes had
been so deep, the scattered boulders so plentiful, that the two men had been forced to move at a slow
trot, to avoid crippling their three precious animals. And, of course, this far south, farms were
nonexistent; they had been able to eat nothing but the dried provisions in the saddlebags, and last night
they had slept in a roadside service station, suspending their hammocks between the tilted, rusty gas
pumps.
But it was still the best, the most direct route, Jerry Franklin knew. The Turnpike was a government
road: its rubble was cleared semiannually. They had made excel-lent time and come through without even
developing a limp in the pack horse. As they swung out on the last lap, past the riven tree stump with the
words TRENTON EXIT carved on its side, Jerry relaxed a bit. His father, his father's colleagues,
would be proud of him. And he was proud of himself.
But the next moment, he was alert again. He roweled his horse, moved up along-side his
companion, a young man of his own age.
"Protocol," he reminded. "I'm the leader here. You know better than to ride ahead of me this close
to Trenton."
He hated to pull rank. But facts were facts, and if a subordinate got above himself he was asking to
be set down. After all, he was the sonтАФand the oldest son, at thatтАФof the Senator from Idaho; Sam
Rutherford's father was a mere Undersecretary of State and Sam's mother's family was pure post-office
clerk all the way back.
Sam nodded apologetically and reined his horse back the proper couple of feet. "Thought I saw
something odd," he explained. "Looked like an advance party on the side of the roadтАФand I could have
sworn they were wearing buffalo robes."
"Seminole don't wear buffalo robes, Sammy. Don't you remember your sopho-more political
science?"
"I never had any political science, Mr. Franklin: I was an engineering major. Dig-ging around in ruins
has always been my dish. But from the little I know, I didn't think buffalo robes went with the Seminole.
That's why I wasтАФ"
"Concentrate on the pack horse," Jerry advised. "Negotiations are my job."
As he said this, he was unable to refrain from touching the pouch upon his breast with rippling
fingertips. Inside it was his commission, carefully typed on one of the last precious sheets of official
government stationery (and it was not one whit less official because the reverse side had been used years
ago as a scribbled interoffice memo) and signed by the President himself. In ink!
The existence of such documents was important to a man in later life. He would have to hand it over,
in all probability, during the conferences, but the commission to which it attested would be on file in the
capital up north.
And when his father died, and he took over one of the two hallowed Idaho seats, it would give him
enough stature to make an attempt at membership on the Appro-priations Committee. Or, for that
matter, why not go the whole hogтАФthe Rules Committee itself? No Senator Franklin had ever been a
member of the Rules Committee...
The two envoys knew they were on the outskirts of Trenton when they passed the first gangs of
Jerseyites working to clear the road. Frightened faces glanced at them briefly, and quickly bent again to
work. The gangs were working without any visible supervision. Evidently the Seminole felt that simple
instructions were sufficient.
But as they rode into the blocks of neat ruins that were the city proper and still came across nobody
more important than white men, another explanation began to occur to Jerry Franklin. This all had the
look of a town still at war, but where were the combatants? Almost certainly on the other side of
Trenton, defending the Delaware RiverтАФthat was the direction from which the new rulers of Trenton